Wallfahrt zum Zweiten Tempel (2009 Dyma), book
Die Wallfahrt zum Zweiten Tempel. Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Wallfahrtsfeste in vorhasmonäischer Zeit (2009) is a book by Oliver Dyma.
Abstract
Die heutige Sicht auf die großen Wallfahrtsfeste Pesach, Wochen- und Laubhüttenfest ist vor allem durch die Darstellungen im Neuen Testament, bei Josephus und in verschiedenen rabbinischen Texten geprägt. Oliver Dyma geht der Frage nach, ab wann man mit großen Wallfahrten nach Jerusalem mit Teilnehmern aus aller Welt rechnen kann. Hierzu analysiert er zunächst die sogenannten Kultkalender als normative Grundlage (Ex 23; Ex 34; Dtn 16; Lev 23; Num 28f.). Anschließend untersucht er die fiktionalen Darstellungen der zwei großen Pesachfeiern in den Chronikbüchern (2 Chr 30 und 35) sowie die fiktiven Erinnerungen an die Wallfahrten im Buch Tobit. Hierbei liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der Frage, welche historischen Rückschlüsse diese Texte für die Zeit ihrer Abfassung zulassen. In beiden Werken liegt ein besonderer Fokus auf den Wallfahrern aus dem Gebiet des ehemaligen Nordreiches, jedoch mit unterschiedlicher Akzentsetzung, was auf eine veränderte Wallfahrtspraxis hindeutet. Die sogenannten Wallfahrtspsalmen (Ps 120-134) erweisen sich schließlich als historisch kaum auswertbare Quellen. In der Zusammenschau zeigt sich, dass man vor der Zeit der Hasmonäer kaum mit einem großen Wallfahrtsbetrieb am Jerusalemer Tempel rechnen kann. Durch eine Analyse verschiedener Termini, die sonst dafür in Anschlag gebracht werden, zeigt Oliver Dyma, dass von einer spezifischen Wallfahrtsterminologie im Alten Testament nicht die Rede sein kann. Abschließend ordnet er die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse historisch ein und wirft einen Blick auf die weitere Entwicklung. (Publishers page: [[1]])
Editions and translations
Published in Tübingen [Germany]: Mohr Siebeck, 2009 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe, 40). ISBN: 978-3-16-149772-8
Reviews
A review of the book (written by Thomas Hieke) will be published in "HENOCH".
Preliminary version of the review (needs editing!)
Dyma’s study is a slightly revised version of his dissertation submitted to the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen (2008, director: Prof. Dr. Herbert Niehr). The author analyzes biblical texts from the Second Temple period, sketches the picture that these texts reveal about the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, and asks about historical traces in order to reconstruct the socio-historical reality of these pilgrimages. The blurb on the cover anticipates one of his main results: There are no large numbers of pilgrims to Jerusalem before the era of the Hasmoneans. Dyma is probably right with this assumption, and it is interesting to see how he can underscore this hypothesis by the biblical texts he analyzes.
However, Dyma does not start in medias res, but rather begins with the more obvious: He gives a brief summary about the image of “pilgrimage to Jerusalem” one gets from the New Testament and Josephus. For the New Testament, one has to consider the Gospel of Luke and Acts as well as the Gospel of John. Josephus (as well as Philo) speaks of large numbers of pilgrims that came to Jerusalem. These masses caused several conflicts with the Roman authorities. Dyma’s aim, however, is to find out something about the reality of pilgrimages before the Roman era. He goes on with a religion-historical definition of “feast” and “pilgrimage” and a brief sketch of former approaches to the topic (by B. Kötting 1950; S. Safrai 1967; M.S. Smith 1997; M.D. Knowles 2006). Against this background, Dyma points out the problem he wants to solve: the historical development that led to the elaborated pilgrimages of the first century C.E. Since S. Safrai investigated thoroughly the rabbinic sources, Dyma rather focuses on the biblical feast calendars and the historical situation reflected in Chronicles, Tobit, and Psalms. In doing so, he necessarily runs into the controversy between “Maximalists” and “Minimalists” about the Hebrew Bible as a historical source. Dyma regards the biblical texts as necessary but secondary resources for the historical reconstruction. The texts need to be read as that what they are: literature and fiction – hence one must analyze their genre, their intention and ideology in order to get hints for the socio-historical situation that led to their origin.
In the second chapter, Dyma deals with normative texts, i.e., the festival calendars in Exod 23:14-19; Deuteronomy 16; Exod 34:18-26; Leviticus 23, and Numbers 28-29. Deut 16 transforms the original concepts of Exod 23: The feasts are located at the central sanctuary and integrated in a systematic calendar; Maṣṣōt and Pesaḥ are combined. Lev 23 fixes the three pilgrimage feasts and integrates them in a liturgical calendar with seven accentuated days: the first and seventh day of Maṣṣōt, the Festival of Weeks, the Day of Alarm Blasts, the Day of Atonement, the first and last day of Sukkoth (Booths). The tendency to stress especially the feast of Sukkoth in Lev 23 finds a continuation in the calendar of Num 28-29.
In his third chapter, Dyma treats the pilgrimage to Jerusalem according to Chronicles, the Book of Tobit, and the Psalms. He starts with a discussion of the origin and the historical reliability of Chronicles. After forty pages (pp. 88-130), Dyma opts for an origin of Chronicles within the 3rd century B.C.E., but he also states that the uncertainness of data does not allow one to build larger conclusions on this hypothesis. The forty pages are a nice overview over the current state of research on Chronicles, but they have almost no impact on Dyma’s topic. This piece of industrious work could have been shortened for publication. On p. 131, Dyma picks up his thread and deals with the presentation of the Pesaḥ celebration by Josiah (2Chr 35) and Hezekiah (2Chr 30) and other descriptions of cultic ceremonies in Chronicles. Dyma first interprets the representation of the Pesaḥ celebration according to the Endtext, then he turns to a source-critical analysis of 2Chr 35. He elaborates a Grundschicht and secondary passages. Again, this is an industrious work that does not reveal much about the question of the pilgrimages. From his work on the final form of the text, Dyma carefully draws as a conclusion that the Plural פסחים and the installation of Levites as intermediaries may point to the establishing of a central Pesaḥ celebration at the Jerusalem Temple with a larger number of participants at the time of the Chronicler (i.e., 3rd century according to Dyma). The Pesaḥ of Hezekiah (that has no parallel in 2Kings) is probably a literary reworking of Josiah’s Pesaḥ. In order to get a full picture of the understanding of Pesaḥ in Chronicles, Dyma turns to the establishing of the Temple cult under Solomon in 2Chr 8. The pragmatic purpose of this literary construction runs as follows: Solomon’s cult is depicted in full accordance with the law, and all following rulers failed in celebrating the cult correctly (as the utopian Solomon and Josiah did). After summarizing the characteristic features of the literary description of the cult in Chronicles, Dyma draws historical conclusions for the situation in the third century. The inhabitants of the Northern territory were invited to participate (see 2Chr 30), but only few did actually come; the pilgrimage of the Judaeans on the occasion of Pesaḥ took place according to Deut 16. There were no pilgrims from the countries abroad. One of the most important aims of Chronicles was to invite all Jews to participate in the cult at the central sanctuary in Jerusalem.
Next, Dyma deals with the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit. After a discussion of the problems of the textual transmission (Greek versions, Hebrew and Aramaic fragments from Qumran) and the literary unity, Dyma opts for an origin within the early second century B.C.E. He describes how the Book of Tobit unfolds the ideal identity as a Jew observing the Torah within a Diaspora situation. For his topic of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Dyma analyzes three texts (Tob 1:4-9; Tob 2; Tob 5:14). The function of the mentioning of pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the Book of Tobit is to remember the life in the Holy Land. The sacrifices and the tithes for the poor become more and more important – Dyma dedicates an excursus (pp. 237-245) to the issue of dues to the temple (first fruits and tithes). As a historical conclusion, Dyma maintains that the pilgrimage from within the land to Jerusalem was taken for granted at the time of the origin of the Book of Tobit, hence it could be used to depict Tobit as a true Israelite observing the law. It is also taken for granted that the Jews from the Diaspora do not make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The pilgrimages were accompanied by dues to the temple and for the poor. The festival of Weeks is established as pentekoste and probably connected with pilgrimages. While Chronicles (third century) had yet to promote the pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the Book of Tobit (second century) took them already for granted.
Regarding the Psalms, Dyma focuses on the Psalms of Ascent (Ps 120-134, especially 122) and the Psalms of Qorach (especially Ps 42/43; 84). He carefully reflects the problem of asking historical questions from Psalms and the issue of interpreting the term “Psalm of Ascent.” As a conclusion, Dyma states that the Psalms of Ascent spiritually and physically tie the Jewish identity to Zion and the Temple: Here Israel meets his/her God, especially during the festivals. Similar aspects hold also true for the Psalms of Qorach. Both collections of psalms presuppose a practice of pilgrimage to Jerusalem in larger groups. The Psalms underscore the geographic notion of Jerusalem and the Temple as the center of the world and as a place of safety and peace. This ideology of a positively connotated pilgrimage is the basis for a beginning expansion of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
The short fourth chapter examines the terminology of pilgrimage: חג (“festival,” but not necessarily only a pilgrimage festival), עלה (not a technical term for participation in a pilgrimage), ראה niphal (“to appear before God:” a cultic formula, but not restricted to pilgrimages). Dyma concludes that there is no specific terminology for pilgrimages in the earlier times; later on these terms were more and more used in a technical way.
In the fifth chapter, Dyma summarizes his results. In the early post-exilic period, the catchment area of Jerusalem was so small (a radius of about 30 to 50 kilometers) that pilgrimages to Jerusalem were no problem and taken for granted. The centralization of the cult in Deuteronomy served as the ideological basis. There is only scant evidence for pre-exilic pilgrimages; the few texts that seem to speak about pilgrimages in the era of the Monarchy stem from later periods or are fictitious. The Elephantine papyri demonstrate that no pilgrimage took place from Elephantine to Jerusalem. The two letters at the beginning of 2Maccabees, especially the end of the second one, seem to propagate a pilgrimage from abroad to Jerusalem – that fits to the overall intention of 2Maccabees (“Temple Propaganda” according to R. Doran). The dating of the festivals indicates that the Temple adopted the international lunisolar calendar that was already in use in the Diaspora. In sum, one can say that the earliest traces for pilgrimages in a greater scale can be found in Chronicles dating to the early Hellenistic period; maybe some people from the Northern territory came to Jerusalem, too. The Book of Tobit (approx. 200 B.C.E.) presupposes pilgrimages from the Northern and Southern territory; pilgrimages to Jerusalem are a hallmark of an observant Jew. The fortifications of the High Priest Simeon II (round 200) on the Temple Mount may also be due to larger numbers of pilgrims. The Diaspora as addressee for invitations to pilgrimages to Jerusalem is first focused in the letters at the beginning of 2 Maccabees. All in all, the pilgrimages one knows from Josephus and Luke-Acts are a rather “late” phenomenon, beginning not earlier than the second century B.C.E. (or the Hasmonean period).
Dyma presents a very well laid out thesis; his arguments are sound and convincing. He presents the biblical evidence well-balanced and introduces the sources he examines in a very extensive way. At times the thread of the topic is left due to rather large discussion of “introductory” questions about the origin of, e.g., Chronicles, the Psalms of Ascent etc. Several pages are used for source critical studies (German Literarkritik) that seem rather speculative and less comprehensible – and not very fruitful for his overall thesis. This critique aside – the informed reader may flip through these pages – the study demonstrates in a careful manner what kind of historical information about a certain phenomenon in the history of biblical Israel (here: the pilgrimage to the Temple) one can get from the texts of the Hebrew Bible itself. Thereby the book shows that there is a way beyond “Maximalism” or “Minimalism.” Dyma’s study is an important contribution to the study of the later Second Temple period.